Design question

vsego

I have to make something that looks like directory browsing. I was asked to make it as a hierarchy, spreading from top node down.

One idea is emulation of WinExplorer directory tree, but that kinda sucks (not very pretty).

Each node can have none, one, two or even hundreds of children. Also, I prefer to do it all in one page, so that user doesn't have to reload the page every time he goes one level deeper.

Any ideas on design of this? JavaScript is allowed, but I'd like to avoid browser-specific tricks (targeted audience are mostly Linux users).

Thanx!

Anon

I've seen some good prefab javascripts to do this, and Mozilla's JS support is great...But your in the wrong place for that.
If you are targeting mostly Linux you can also implement it as an applet, which is incredibly easy if you know Java because the directory tree is a ready made Swing component...But this means swing, which means a big download for Win to get the latest JRE.

funnily, I've actually seen decent ones made in flash as well, but most Linux users are under the strange delusion that flash is not available for Linux..which it is. But flash is just not for this sort of thing, IMHO

Never underestimate the power of doing it all in PHP though. Just put the dynamic content in a frame or layer, and keep it non graphical or and light.

vsego

Thanx. Actually, I've done it in pure PHP and is much prettier than standard dir tree. You can see it at http://pc033.math.hr/ though server is not on all the time (it's my development machine).

JavaScript, Java, Flash... they're all a kind of a problem - this site is inteded to be used as a part of CERN's project and scientists are not too keen to use new technologies. I've seen new sites there written in plain HTML 1.0! And, yes, I already got complaints for using PHP and not, for example, Perl. :-)

Anon

Nice work!

the dev server is a bit slow, I can see the functionality....Looks good!

I agree with your comment about keeping it on the server. I want to target 100% of my visitors, not 70% or 90%....But I also like to use what a browser can do, in commercial sites. (probably doesn't matter in sci so much)

On of my favorite tricks to pull this off is to make a PHP class in which I assign values to the fields representing the essential content of the component, no HTML at all. then I make an HTML "mask" that calls the contents of the fields at each special place in the HTML. From here, its easy to make a "mask" the utilizes the best of IE, and another one that is functional in Lynx if that's what the server detects.

vsego

Croatian network is currently slow, the machine itself is fine.

I know what you mean with class. Some time ago I've designed a class for maniging all tree-like formations. Quite customizible. But, this site took me 3 days to complete. Of which one whole day was used for optimizations. I'm triing to avoid all unnecessary overload. If you've checked "About" page, you saw all the caching included.

Btw, in sci - even if it works, many will say it's junk because of fancy JavaScript/Java/... stuff. It must work - nothing more. I wouldn't be suprised if someone complained over the use of tables!

Thanx for your comments.